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Selfie: This ABC show is normally one that it would never occur to me to watch. But it showed up On Demand from my cable service so I thought why not? As for the “why” in this case…Karen Gillan. I figured she would be worth watching if nothing else. As it turns out, as a comedy this show is terrible, but watching the pilot, it had a few surprises.

First, I’m not sure Karen Gillan can really do an American accent. It sounds as if she is going over her lines with a dialect coach, taping, then on to the next few lines to practice her Americanese; at least when she’s understandable. Unfortunately her character speaks in such an argot of social media nonsense that she’s probably mostly unintelligible to all but teenagers. But an American accent is wasted on her. Why take a beautiful Scottish actress and force her to talk like an American teenager? In other words, this is not the role for her.

Second, I was about 12 minutes into the pilot when suddenly it hit me, her character, Eliza Dooley…dang it, this was a retelling of My Fair Lady! Like the most interesting man in the world, I don’t often recommend a musical, but when I do, it’s My Fair Lady.

So knowing that much, you can probably guess what the show is about. Self centered Social Media maven goes to the top marketing guy in her company to try change her image and herself into a normal human being. Antics ensue and you can guess where this will be going for Eliza and Henry, the marketing guru. The question is, will I watch this? I don’t know but it’s got two things going for it: Pond (Karen Gillan of course) and My Fair Lady. But whether I watch it or not, it’s a safe bet that the rest of America won’t. Already on the list as one of the worst new shows, it’s unlikely this show will get past one season, which is really all for the best. Karen Gillan deserves better than this and the sooner this goes away the sooner she can get better than this.

Last Monday night was the season two premiere of Sleepy Hollow. Considering where the show left off at the end of Season one, Ichabod Crane was trapped in a coffin, put there by his son, revealed as the Horseman of War and his wife Katrina retrieved from Purgatory, was kidnapped by the Headless Horseman (True love don’t ya know). Meanwhile Abbie Mills was stranded in Purgatory. All in all, a lot of dangling plots. So I was really annoyed that the first ten minutes of the show picked up as if a year had gone by. Sometimes these shows are too clever by half.

And although I’ve enjoyed the show it’s annoyed me almost as much. It’s sort of a supernatural Castle, which isn’t a bad thing. However regardless of whether it’s good or not I’m stuck with it since this is one of those shows that my wife and I watch together, so there is no easy way to bail out of watching. So since I’m in for the long haul, let me get a few things off my chest:

First, I don’t like how densely packed the mythology is. There is a lot of worldview that you are given to swallow, and I’m not sure it all makes sense when you are combining an old American fairy tale with Biblical themes. The Headless Horseman is one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Ichabod and Abbie are the two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelations. They could have eased us into all this.

Secondly, yes, Ichabod Crane is brilliant and educated, but come on, he’s adapted to the 21st Century a little too well. They could have gotten a lot more play out of his fumbling with light switches and car door handles, He’s confused about filling up the memory on his cell phone with video, but not with the concept of the phone itself? But as well as he fits into the 21st Century, he’s still wearing the same 18th Century wardrobe. Some Dockers and a polo might be a nice change of pace.

The elephant in the room, which is almost never mentioned, is race. The show as much as sleeps through race as Ichabod Crane slept through the centuries. On TV, when you have such a diverse cast racial issues are either the star of the show or are totally ignored. How many shows have had the one black friend, who hangs around with a bunch of white guys but has no black friends? That’s not a really an example of the real world. Of course, the world of Sleepy Hollow isn’t of course the real world, but the Headless Horseman seems more realistic than the casual way the show ignores race.

And it’s surprising too considering the diverse cast. It’s probably one of the most diverse casts of a show when it didn’t need to be. The show is set in upstate New York, and if the cast had wound up all white, no one would have batted an eye. But the producers specifically went for a rainbow of colors in casting. Why waste it?

When Ichabod and Abbie first meet, he asks her if she’s been emancipated. Naturally she’s a bit incensed at this but humors him about being from the 18th Century and explains that slaves were freed. Crane of course quickly explains that he’s always been an abolitionist with all of the quick earnestness of a white liberal meeting a black person and saying that they so respect Martin Luther King and think soul food is the best food ever.

And that’s it. They’re partners and work together as equals in 21st Century fashion and race never comes up again. The thing is, race would come up every day for Crane. Skipping over the past two centuries leaves quite a gap in the racial history of the United States. Crane should be constantly full of questions about racial manners and mores.

Well, it’s a wasted opportunity not to explore race, particularly when the set up of the show gives you the perfect opportunity. Oh well, back to chasing monsters.

Black-ish is the latest attempt to sell an ethnic sitcom to the wider, non ethnic audience. Unlike the Cosby Show, in which a Black upper middle class family has the same concerns as any non Black upper middle class, and being Black was not a prominent part of the show, Black-ish is about nothing else but being Black. It’s about upper middle class Black people who are concerned about being Black, ruminating what it means to be Black, embracing Black culture, maintaining Black culture, what is Black Culture… in short, it’s all Black, all the time.

Or at least that’s the case for the main character, Heathcliff Huxtable…err I mean Andre Johnson. Anthony Anderson plays the Bill Cosby character in this Cosby show with guilt that can’t seem to stop thinking about race and its effect on virtually every aspect of his life. I literally could not keep track of the number of stereotypes that this show…not skewered like you would think, but embraced. The main character is desperate to get his family playing basketball, eating fried chicken, you name it.

The lesson here is that assimilation to middle class values is bad, and “keeping it real” is good. But maybe that’s just my white privilege talking. Could this really be a positive uplifting show that I can’t see because of my privilege? If so, how do I “check my privilege” in order to understand the true intent?

After typing into Google, “Am I racist for thinking the new show Black-ish is racist?” I did find there was an actual Change.org petition requesting the show be dropped from the fall schedule because…it’s racist. So I’m not alone on that. But being racist isn’t even the worst sin this show commits.

It’s not funny.

Based on the pilot episode, the laughs were pretty sparse, and by sparse, I mean I didn’t laugh once, although maybe I missed something since I was constantly checking the clock. If the show had been racist and funny, this would have been a totally different review. Some of the stuff that white people like is Black comedians playing up Black stereotypes. Oh, how white people like that! But for a show in which the main character wants to base his life on a racist parody of Black life you would think there would be laughs.

So I cannot give this show my much coveted thumbs up. There might be a Black audience for this show, and maybe it could find a second life on BET, but I don’t think that ABC is going to be keeping this.

Like any serious professional middle aged man, I’m a big fan of Batman, but I was skeptical about Fox’s new show Gotham. A Batman show without Batman, set in a crime riddled, corrupt city. It sounds like New York City in the 1970’s. In fact, the show sounds like Serpico, minus the villain origin stories. Anyone expecting superhero antics might be disappointed, at least based on the pilot episode that I watched.

However, knowing all of that going in, I was not disappointed. Anyone familiar with Batman can guess the broad outlines of the pilot. New Detective James Gordon finds himself investigating the murders of noted city philanthropists and multimillionaires Thomas and Martha Wayne. The crime, an armed robbery gone wrong (or was it?) leaves behind an orphaned Bruce who witnesses the murder of his parents. Hmm, that can’t affect the mental health and psyche of a small child can it? Future history says yes, but this show isn’t concerned about the future. Set in the ever present now, it’s dealing with the gritty life in the big city; Law & Order: Gotham.

The Wayne murder case seems to wrap up fairly easily; yep you guessed it, too easy. There is clearly more going on than a simple street crime, and the show not only sets up the murder as the gateway to an even larger mystery, but lays out several different plot paths to be explored, such as the relationship between Gordon’s fiancée Barbara and Detective Montoya. Of course again, like any serious professional person, I have a pretty good guess what the secret is that Barbara and Montoya are keeping, but no point in dropping spoilers.

So not Batman, but James Gordon, played by earnest looking Ben McKenzie, makes for a pretty good heroic cop. With a crooked partner in tow, we’ll see what sort of price Gordon may have to pay for being the lone honest cop. Maybe I ought to re-watch Serpico.

Forever falls in a long line of single immortal in the big city television, from the Canadian Forever Knight, about a single immortal vampire in the big city to New Amsterdam, about an Indian cursed single Jamie Lannister in the big city. Doctor Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd) is a 200 year old New York Medical Examiner who teams up with a New York cop to solve mysteries. Call it Quincy meets Sherlock Holmes meets Castle meets Lazarus Long.meets…and so on.

The actual reason of why Morgan is immortal is vague and Morgan doesn’t understand it himself. Thrown off a slave ship centuries ago he “dies” and somehow comes to life again. Each time he dies, he wakes up in a nearby body of water, totally healed of what’s killed him. Left unanswered, does his body vanishes from the moment of death until he’s reborn or does he just get a new body? One assumes the latter since in the pilot episode, he dies twice, each time at a crime scene where an extra body would no doubt raise questions.

This sort of mechanism of being reborn in water as a path to immortality leads to a supernatural explanation, rather than some pseudo scientific one. An odd choice when the doctor in question is wedded to reason and logic. And, like Sherlock Holmes, he’s annoying in the way he loves to show how smart he is by pointing out all of his little deductions. People really love to be told their business first thing in the morning, so Dr. Morgan isn’t exactly overloaded with friends. But in this case that’s a good thing. For the viewer, it makes Morgan likeable and human by being an aggravating know it all.

With new grumpy female cop partner that he has to hide his secret from (will they…?), a close friend who knows his secret and a mysterious phone caller who also knows his secret, and may be immortal like Morgan, the story arc is already built in. Is this show a copy of a copy of a copy of several current and previous TV shows? Heck yes, but for all that it seems to have its charm, and given the strength of last night’s pilot episode, I’ll give it a thumbs up.

My reaction to Obama’s speech last week outlining his plans to deal with ISIS started out like most Obama speeches I watch. I started out with the best of intentions; I was going to pay attention, make note of the high points…but at some point his speech starts taking on a droning quality, and then it becomes a test pattern buzzing…and then I’m watching cat videos on line and what? It’s over? What did he say? For some reason, I can no longer pay attention to the world’s greatest orator.

So I had to read it online and just didn’t find it that workable. No wonder I couldn’t pay attention to it. Oh I give the President credit for trying. I had written previously that the President is making a difficult step; facing the reality that he may wind up going back to the place he was most anxious to leave, Iraq. But the President thinks he can build the type of coalition the previous Bush Presidents had built, and they’ll trust him on it, when he’s been trashing our relationships with most of the Middle East for the past 6 years.

But not to worry, I have an alternate plan.

The problem with Obama’s plan is it depends on stuff he is unlikely to get; ground troops from other coalition partners. They have zero reason to trust us for the long haul, so are unlikely to put their own troops up when we are making clear that we’re not. We’re telling our coalition partners that we’re not going risk our troops, but we’ll gladly risk theirs. You can imagine how that’s going to sit in the differing capitals. So that only leaves the air option, associated support, and training of Syrian rebels.

This brings me to another problem with Obama’s plan: training Syrian rebels. It’s a bad idea in my opinion. We’re rolling the dice that we can arm and train Jihadi’s that will only fight other Jihadi’s. Even a military noob like Obama should be able to see where that will lead.

So what’s my plan? First, since the beginning of the crisis, the US has pushed the Iraqi government to be more inclusive and allow US troops back in. Done and done. If the administration had done this in the first place, we likely wouldn’t be in this situation, but water under the bridge…

1) That leaves limited forces that are worthwhile to train; mainly the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army. Of the two, the Peshmerga is the more motivated and reliable force, but they could really benefit from advanced weaponry, and intelligence assistance. The Iraqi Army is demoralized and needs a great deal of babysitting. Ideally, we would only need worry about helping the Iraqi Army but they are not up to the task of kicking ISIS out of Iraqi cities. Some of the Shia militias might be but if we add them into the coalition we risk alienating Iraqi Sunnis, as well as the Sunni coalition partners. The only Shias we should be reaching out to are those under the auspices of the Iraqi military. So no dealing with Iran of course.

2) Since the US invasion, the problem with Iraq has been its porous borders. They allowed jihadi’s and supplies from all over the world to come to Iraq and fight Americans, and later allowed the Iranians to train and equip insurgents to fight Americans with extremely sophisticated weapons and tactics. Since the Iraqi Army is the weakest link, their best use could be used as a border guard. We need to secure Iraq’s borders to prevent ISIS the easy back and forth access they’ve enjoyed. If we can cut ISIS in two the Peshmerga can secure Kurdistan easier and the Iraqi’s will have a more limited force to deal with and it will make it easier to take back the cities when they don’t have to worry about ISIS reinforcements.

3) Cutting ISIS in two saves Obama from the political problem Obama has created for himself in being in a de facto alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad is counting on the US taking care of his ISIS problem for him. However if we secure the border, that leaves Syrian part of a bifurcated ISIS for Assad to handle. Do we really want to be in the position of saving the Assad regime? I say, that cutting ISIS in two solves both the military and political problem.

4) There is one major gap that’s missing, and this is the part that makes my plan politically impossible; if needed, we need to be prepared to send in ground forces to back up our Iraqi and Kurd partners. Yes, the dreaded, boots on the ground! Although I opposed the initial invasion of Iraq, I get Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn warning; we break it, we buy it. That’s why I was able to consistently oppose the invasion, support the surge, and support keeping a stabilizing force in Iraq. So post surge, by 2008 we had a fragile Iraq taped up, the new administration was only interested in getting out and not caring about what came after. So although Bush was wrong to invade Iraq, Obama was wrong to abandon it. Now, we’re still responsible for fixing it.

Not to worry, there’s no chance that any of my suggestions will be adopted. Of course maybe I’m wrong and we can defeat ISIS with air power alone. But I’m not counting on it,

One of the great mysteries of the post-financial crisis world is why the U.S. has lacked inflation despite all the money being pumped into the economy.

Well it’s not that big a mystery. Part of the answer is has been the interest rates the FED has been paying on excess reserves that Congress approved with the 2008 TARP bill. That’s given the banks more incentive to sit on those reserves rather than loan them out. With the current low interest rates, it’s a safer and better deal to draw interest from the FED than take a chance loaning out the money for not a substantially greater interest rate, but with much more risk.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks it has the answer: A paper the central bank branch published this week blames the low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their “willingness to hoard money.” The paper also cites the Fed’s own policies as a reason for consumers’ unwillingness to spend.

That seems like a cheap shot to the American consumer, but what they are really describing is the Velocity of Money, “The rate at which money is exchanged from one transaction to another, and how much a unit of currency is used in a given period of time.” In other words, how fast is money changing hands, going from one transaction to another. Right now this low money velocity may actually be a good thing because otherwise:

Under normal circumstances, according to the Fed analysis, when the money supply increases at a faster rate than economic output, which has been the case since the Fed has instituted its aggressive easing practices, prices should keep pace. Factoring in the growth in the money supply against output, inflation should have grown at a whopping 33 percent annually, when in fact it has been rising less than 2 percent.

33 percent inflation rate! That is what we should have been dealing with under conventional economic theory!

The reason that inflation hasn’t kept up with gains in the money supply simply has been that people are sitting on cash rather than spending it, which has kept money velocity at historically low levels.

So that makes me wonder, what happens when the economy eventually recovers, normal economic resumes, and the money velocity returns to its normal rate? It’s unlikely to happen under the Obama administration, unless there is a major turnaround of economic policies, but one assumes that eventually there will be an administration that will right the economic ship. Will we have to deal with a massive burst of inflation just to finally recover from our sluggish economic growth?